For Bloggers, Entrecard Strives to Make a Difference
Posted on July 16th, 2008 by Richard Catto 1,567 views
Full disclosure: this post is being written as an entry in this EntreCard contest. To avoid being penalised by Google, the preceding link is nofollow.
It’s been a while since I last wrote about EntreCard (since Sunday January 13 2008, in fact).
EntreCard is a service for bloggers, and its goals have been to help bloggers become more successful by increasing their exposure and thus driving more traffic to them.
To that end, EntreCard set up a system of credits whereby visitors to a blog gain an EntreCard credit by dropping their "calling card" (aka their EntreCard) by clicking the Drop link on the EntreCard widget which the blog publishes. When they do that, both they and the blog owner gains one EC credit each. Obviously, for this to work, both the blog owner and the blog reader must be part of the EntreCard network.
EC credits are used to purchase 125 x 125 pixel adverts on blogs which are part of the EC network. One of the most controversial aspects of the EC network is how the pricing for this advertising works. This is determined solely by an EC algorithm. Blog owners have no say at all in the pricing of their EC advert widget. So instead of being market based (using, e.g. an auction system), the price is centrally controlled.
Only blog owners may join the EntreCard network at the moment and to remain a member, they must display the EC widget.
One of the earliest detectable problems with the EntreCard system, is the high bounce rate that the EC network creates for bloggers. What this means is that, in the rush to amass the maximum of 300 EC credits per day possible, some EC bloggers load blogs, click the Drop link and then exit the site without reading a single blog post or leaving a comment on the blog. To many bloggers this seems to be a self-defeating exercise. Gaining EC credits is not the ultimate goal of bloggers, rather building their own involved community of readers is.
To put the brakes on these quick-droppers and increase participation in blog commenting, EC has adopted a number of measures. Firstly, EC recently outlawed quick-drop pages which are defined as any page upon which no blog content is published save for the EC widget, and perhaps a few adverts. The EC blog has also introduced various contests, such as CommentRUSH to encourage EC bloggers to comment on a chosen blog. EC has also led their users to Digg to get their users to use Digg to promote EC blog posts they enjoy.
The latest initiative of EntreCard has been to partner with SezWho which provides a method of tracking commenters and their reputations across SezWho’s installed base of blogs.
EntreCard is running a "secret" contest (with EC credits as prizes) to motivate EC bloggers (such as myself) to actively promote this new partnership, not only on their own blogs, but also, rather controversially, via a third party social network service – twitter. This could be seen as inciting their users to spam twitter.
Even more controversially, the EC "secret" contest offers bonus credits to those EC bloggers willing to use a special EC supplied "bonus title" as the title for their post, and furthermore EC stipulates that bloggers using such a "bonus title" may not disclose that they are doing so. Anyone who knows even a little bit about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) will realise that these bonus titles are being crafted by EC to game search engine results.
Full disclosure: this blog post is using an EC supplied "bonus title" as the title for this blog post.
I believe it is a pity that EC decided to adopt these rather dubious and opaque methods to promote their new partnership with SezWho, because it does nothing but detract from an initiative that could prove very rewarding for EC bloggers.
EC is augmenting SezWho’s benefits by awarding EC credits (up to a maximum of 150 EC per day) to EC bloggers who comment on other EC blogs. Credits are awarded according to the rating the comment achieves. Spam comments receive no reward.
FURTHER READING:
Desperation at SezWho? Partners with Izea, Entrecard, and Creative Weblogging
Announcing the Partnership of Entrecard and SezWho
Tags: EntreCard, SezWho
Filed under Blogging |
6 Responses to “For Bloggers, Entrecard Strives to Make a Difference”
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Chris M Says:
July 16th, 2008 at 16:15When Entrecard entered the web space, it was incredible, thousands of people raced to the system and took part in the innovation it provided. Slowly over the months, it’s become more of a spammy sort of system, imo, and I really don’t see any value from it anymore :/
I also found 3 or 4 massive exploits in the system, giving users the ability to gain as many credits as they wanted as well as purchasing peoples items in the market place for free. I communicated these to the admin, to which I got a random, automatic, thank you message back, I wasn’t impressed about this.
I think the system has evolved into rubbish unfortunately and think they should roll back a little and bring it back up to the great thing it used to be..
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Richard Catto Says:
July 16th, 2008 at 16:47@Chris: I still derive value from it, but I think they have made a few wrong moves. Nothing that can’t be corrected, but that depends on whether they are prepared to accept constructive criticism from their user base and act upon it.
A comment I left on EC’s blog about this blog post has not been published which shows that they do not like what I wrote in this post.
When EC announced that they were going to allow people to trade EC credits, I imagined that they would set up an auction system to facilitate trade. Instead they decided to fix selling prices and dictate the mechanism of payment via PayPal which, as we both know, excludes South Africans from selling EC credits.
I also think that EC should not dictate to bloggers what it costs to advertise on any given EC blog. Rather they should facilitate the decision making process by providing both buyer and seller with the necessary metrics to arrive at that decision.
The way EC could make money is by taking a percentage off each transaction. They could then sell their credits via the open market. Of course, they could just invent new EC credits from thin air, but doing that would obviously devalue EC credits very quickly and their economy would experience hyperinflation.
I really hope they will open their minds and accept constructive criticism because where they end up hangs on what they do today.
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Chris M Says:
July 16th, 2008 at 17:11I’m really curious to see what other people have to say about the system. I understand your views and mine, just really want to hear some other peoples.
It would be good for them to see a review such as ours, it’ll allow them to see how we all want things to work and will give them the chance to do so and suite their users.
Chris M’s last blog post..New Facebook Profile Page Preview!
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colleen Says:
July 16th, 2008 at 20:56Over at my blog you remarked that the “organic”-ness of these incentivized comments might be affected by EC’s attempts to push people to do it. If I get any crappy obvious spam comments that get by akismet I will spam them.
Entrecard does what’s good for entrecard. Whenever there’s entrecard action, entrecard wins. Totally agree with u about ad price fixed by entrecard, and fixed price for EC credits. Let the suckers bid on it and may free market rule. I think they should do away with POWER dropping, that’s what sets those bounce rates into the stratosphere. I only drop on sites that I’m actually reading any more. maybe 5-10 a day. Even optimized, Power dropping is sheer torture, I hate doing it and I believe it is counterproductive in the big picture.
colleen’s last blog post..Entrecard gives bloggers all the comments they could ask for!
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colleen Says:
July 16th, 2008 at 21:03PS. What is the logic behind google penalizing us for linking to the contest?
colleen’s last blog post..Entrecard gives bloggers all the comments they could ask for!
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Richard Catto Says:
July 16th, 2008 at 21:55@colleen: Thanks for commenting, Colleen.
Organic in this context means that the person did something because they genuinely wanted to, not because there was some ulterior motive, such as a reward for doing so.
A 100% organic anything probably does not exist, because there are so many different incentives that could be motivating people to do something.
However, for the purposes of appeasing Google, they define organic links as links for which you receive no reward. If you are paid for the link, in some way, and they can find out, then it’s best you mark the link nofollow. Creating a link as an entry into an online competition counts as well. Anything for which you may receive a reward is considered non-organic.
If you decided to go and recruit people to comment regularly on your blog in exchange for payment of some kind, those comments would be considered non-organic. But doing that, without disclosing this to your readers would be taking a risk. If at some point, your ruse was discovered it would be embarrassing for you.
So generally the best policy is to fully disclose your interests in things, and if it is conceivable that readers would assume something that was not the case, it’s best to correct them before they form incorrect impressions.
It’s hard to be honest and above board, and some dishonest bloggers that I have encountered scoff at me and think I’m as rotten as they are, and then go crying to all their friends for support when I expose them.
One of my main delights in life is exposing deceit.
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